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![]() ![]() Access to Care:Is it Improving or Declining?Data Bulletin No. 01
RESPONSES VARY BY INCOME, RACE AND AGE
The one group that was dramatically less likely to experience declining access to care was the elderly. Only 11 percent of them perceived increased difficulty in getting care, while 81 percent reported no change. The fact that the elderly are almost universally covered by Medicare, and thus enjoy greater continuity and consistency in coverage, may account in part for their sense of stability. In fact, insurance status appears to play a strong role in families perceptions of access to care. Forty-three percent of the families that were uninsured at the time of the survey reported worsening access to care, compared with 21 percent of the families with private insurance.
PERCEPTION THAT ACCESS IS WORSE![]() ![]() ![]() COMMUNITY VARIATIONS
Additional study is needed to identify and quantify the factors that underlie perceptions of changes in access and explain variations across communities and demographic categories. In its ongoing efforts to track changes in the health care system and their impact on people, the Center will be able to analyze these factors alongside more objective measures of changes in access. Future iterations of the household survey will enable the Center to measure shifts over time in the perceptions of American families about their access to care.
This Data Bulletin presents preliminary findings from the Household Survey, a nationally representative telephone survey of the civilian, non-institutionalized population conducted 1996 and 1997 as part of the Community Tracking Study. The survey included 43,771 persons in 23,554 families. All comparisons and differences described in the text are statistically significant at the p<0.05 level. |
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